Dalboni Rocha Juliana

Résumé The present PhD dissertation is on the importance of institutional capital (presence and interaction of institutions and organizations) for developmental sustainability of territorial systems of production. It considers institutional capital a limiting factor for the territory’s capacity of response. This importance is even greater in territories of low socioeconomic dynamics (which corresponds to the great majority of the municipalities of the Brazilian semiarid region) that do not have the necessary conditions to pull their own development. Therefore, it is based on the hypothesis that the success and sustainability of strategies that promote territorial development are directly associated to the existing degree of institutional and organizational cooperation – institutional capital – as well as the degree of sustainability of the institutional organization, which is the promoter of such strategies. The purpose of this dissertation, of deepening the knowledge on elements that define institutional capital, in the implantation of territorial development strategies, and that give conditions to its sustainability, resulted in the development of a specific model. The first step in the conception of the model was to define the main elements that promote institutional and organizational cooperation and institutional capital sustainability. With the purpose of clarifying the understanding and reading of each element, and consequently the monitoring of those elements, two indexes were elaborated (and tested) : Institutional and Organizational Cooperation Index (Índice de Cooperação Institucional e Organizacional – ICIO) and the Institutional Capital Sustainability Index (Índice de Sustentabilidade do Capital Institutional – ISCI). The referred indexes are destined to monitoring institutional and organizational cooperation, commitment of partner entities and institutional and organizational capital sustainability for the implementation of territorial development strategies. The application of the indexes was done for two clusters (local productive agglomerations) located in the Brazilian semi-arid, in the mesoregion of Xingó.